SOC 300 Micro

Micro-Sociology Definition

Examines the individual in social context; bordering on psychology; smallest unit of analysis.

A. Nature vs. Nurture

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What did Inglehart & Baker conclude about Marx v. Weber?

They concluded that both Marx and Weber were correct. There is societal change due to economies, such as society becoming more rational and tolerant, but societies also maintain a national character (that is often shaped by religion). Cultural change can take multiple paths. It is not absolute that all religion will disappear.

Nature vs Nurture: What's at stake in this debate?

This debate matters because it can make a difference in terms of social policy. It raises the issue of holding people responsible for things that may have a biological basis (i.e. negative behaviors). It also establishes whether social roles are an extension of biology.

Durkheim on Nature vs. Nurture

Durkheim’s idea was that people’s nurture was shaped by social facts.

EO Wilson on Nature vs. Nurture

Wilson argued that every social phenomenon is shaped or formed by biological necessity. Society exists only because humans needed each other to survive. Cultural variation is phenotypic and social adaptability is genetic.

Kim McDonald, “Partible Paternity”

There was a previous belief that men control reproduction as a means of perpetuating their DNA (i.e. reproduction is nature-driven). However, she proposes a South American case where men shared paternity of a sexual partner’s children and the women controlled reproduction. Reproduction could be socially constructed.

Money & Erhardt - Gender

Most gender identity differentiation occurs in the post-natal period when a preestablished disposition (nature) interacts with socially established signals.

Jeffrey Weeks - Sexuality

Gay and lesbian are political terms, as are labels in general. Identity is constructed and labels are a choice.

B. Nurture

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William James

A psychologist and predecessor/father of American sociology. His definition of self is the sum total of all the things an individual can call theirs.

William James’s Material Self

It’s not just the body but everything one owns that makes up their identity.

William James’s Spiritual Self

It connects humans to some transcendent identity.

William James’s Social Self

The social self/identity is composed of all of someone’s relationships. You have to understand everyone in your life to understand your identity.

Charles Horton Cooley

He argued that the individual has no existence apart from others and that there is no society that is not constituted of individuals. He believed in total nurture, in that people are only “human” once they are socialized.

Charles Horton Cooley’s Looking-Glass Self

It illustrates the reflected character of the self. Step 1 = you imagine what someone else sees when looking at you. Step 2 = you imagine how someone else judges you when looking at you. Step 3 = you have a gut reaction/self-feeling (could be positive or negative) to that which then shapes your sense of self and possibly your behavior if you accept or reject this judgement. Essentially, people are shaped by other people’s perception of them.

Charles Horton Cooley’s Primary Groups

These link people with their society and integrates them into their social fabric. Examples include family, childhood playgroups, and neighborhoods. People are drawn away from their natural selfishness in these groups and are linked to their community as they learn how to be a part of a group. Human nature comes into existence here, as it is acquired through interaction and lost in isolation.

George Herbert Mead

In contrast to Cooley, Mead emphasized the meaning of external interpersonal gestures (real, observable actions).

George Herbert Mead’s Arising Self

The self arises in social experience by responding to oneself as others do. You think of yourself the way that others seem to think of you. Reactions are then expressed as communication “gestures”. There are different selves in different situations. Unlike Cooley, Mead says that humanity does not decay when isolated.

George Herbert Mead’s Reflexive Self

We respond to ourselves as others respond to us, or have an internal conversation about who we are.

George Herbert Mead’s Generalized Other

This is the attitude of the whole community. People are also shaped by people they don’t even know or who they aren’t with. Advanced development means reacting to the generalized as well as the specific other.

Robert Park’s Self

The self is constructed by someone’s conception of their roles in society and the status accorded to those roles. People act the way they think they’re supposed i.e. playing a role.

Erving Goffman’s Extension of Park’s Self

The self is exactly like playing a role or being an actor. Identity is socialized and there is no built in human nature. People are built up from the moral rules pressed onto them

Erving Goffman, “On Face-Work”

People are shaped by others like actors are shaped by an audience. People shape their behaviors as a response to feedback; the people giving a response are also shaped by the recipients’ reactions. Social behavior is composed of lines that support the maintenance of face.

Anette Laureau, “Concerted Cultivation and the Accomplishment of Growth”

Different approaches to child rearing is based on social class. The American Dream rejects that parents’ SES impacts their children. Concerted cultivation is for higher SES children.

Carol Stacks, “Domestic Networks”

The strategy of “cooperating kinspeople” (domestic networks) in order to maintain family in the face of poverty. “Familism or familialism” - focus on the extended family to support and provide.

C. Culture

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Groups/systems are composed of…

culture and structure

Definition of Culture

It’s about a system’s meanings and the behaviors people perform when responding to these meanings; the way reality is constructed within a social system, using ideas and symbols (especially language) to assign meaning; how we behave in relationship to the meanings we have constructed - and it doesn’t need to be factual.

Definition of Beliefs

They are something that a culture says is true. Provides a way to know what is considered true vs. false in a society. Truth and fiction are social constructs, but truths can be true within the system that they’re created in; truth is relative to time and place.

Definition of Values

They are a subset of beliefs that designate what is good/bad, better/worse, etc. They guide choices and how people treat others (what “should” be done).

Definition of Norms

They are a subset of values that are reinforced with social consequences such as rewards and punishments. Society uses norms to create paths of least resistance and may guide people down one path instead of another; this can be seen as functional in providing a sense of order (functionalism). They can be criterion for membership/identity and also a basis of stigmatization; a conflict perspective sees norms as a way to create and preserve inequalities.

Definition of Attitudes

They are reactions, often with emotional content, based on beliefs, values, and norms

High Culture Definition

The aspects of creative culture (literature, art, cuisine, music) that require specialized knowledge and are typically consumed by upper SES individuals. It requires specialized materials and can be used in problematic ways.

Material Culture Definition

The physical expression of our beliefs, values, norms, and attitudes.

Ethnocentrism Definition

It states that our culture is the best culture and measures everything against our own culture.

Cultural Relativity Definition

It states that different cultures are equally good but different. The goodness of a culture is relative to its goals. Cultures can be good for different reasons.

Solomon Asch, “Effects of Group Pressure”

If people live in unanimous cultures, they are more likely to accept and be shaped by the ideas of these cultures. Group pressure can change our perception of fact, especially when the group is unanimous. People in the minority will respond to their lack of belonging.

W. I. Thomas and Florian Znaniecki, “Disorganization of the Polish Immigrant”

Removing an individual from their subculture can result in significantly altered (deviant) behavior/personality. The Polish immigrants in Chicago who were committing crimes didn’t have a powerful social structure to redress their grievances like they did in Poland.

Lisa Wade, “American Hookup: Depp in the Fog”

Understanding how culture (on college campuses) contribute to a certain kind of behavior (in regards to hookups); how behavior formalizes culture.

Michael Pollan, “America’s National Eating Disorder”

American food culture is not stable nor orthodox. Capitalism benefits from people believing that they can’t trust their own taste.

Pico Iyer, “The Beauty of the Package”

The difference between American and Japanese wedding culture is based on how feelings in the U.S. are spontaneous while they are instead elicited by formality in Japan (packaging = pageantry).

D. Structure - Race

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Definition of (Social) Structure

They are the organization of relationships at all levels of society AND the “distributions” that occur in social relationships (wealth, power, people in various positions; who is getting what from these relationships?).

Elements of structure are…

position and role

Social Position Definition

It is the position one holds in a given social system. It can be permanent (father) or temporary (pedestrian). A position does not equal a person, their identity is not synonymous with the positions that they hold. Behavior may be more of a function of position than of personality, as sometimes people do things because they have to and not because they want to. Position can empower and constrains. A position in a social system has a relationship with all the other social positions in a system (they are all connected).

Role Definition

It is the collection of beliefs, values, norms, and attitudes that apply to a position holder in relationship to other position holders. Every position as a role. The role that people play is shaped by the culture of their organization/system. Roles create paths of least resistance as they push people to make certain decisions and they influence/shape how we behave. Holding multiple positions in overlapping system creates role conflict in growing social groups and different and contradicting ideas emerge (mother and wife, father and husband).

W.E.B. Du Bois

He wrote to convince white people that Black people were the creation of the racial structure in the U.S.; there' aren’t problems inherent to being Black

W.E.B. Du Bois’s Color Line

In American society, this makes it so that Black and white people are divided from one another and don’t know one another’s lives. There is physical AND cultural segregation in the past and present, collective and individual, and conscious and unconscious.

W.E.B. Du Bois’s Veil

Because of the color line and its separation, it is difficult for white people to accurately perceive the realities of Black people. It’s like they’re looking through a veil and can only see the general picture but not the details.

W.E.B. Du Bois’s Double-Consciousness

Black Americans have slightly separate identities and their reactions may be different from those of the dominant white society. Black people hesitate before acting because they constantly have to double think. Black people can’t always act the way they want to because of potential conflict with white Americans.

Definition of Race

A primarily socially constructed category based on physical criteria. Its dividing lines are arbitrary and its definition is always changing.

Definition of Ethnicity

A social category of people who share a common culture.

Is race essential or constructed?

Race is constructed and not essential because of how it is always changing and how its defining lines are always shifting.

W.I. and D.S. Thomas, The Thomas Theorem

It doesn’t matter if the interpretations are correct, if people define situations as real, they’re real in their effect. Essentially, it doesn’t matter that race isn’t biologically real; since society says that race is real then there are real consequences as well as structural and societal realities that exist because of that belief.

Allan Johnson on the Origin of U.S. Racial Structure

He says that the origin of the U.S. racial structure (white privilege, etc) came from how the English treated the Irish. The English constructed their beliefs about race in relation to the Irish in that the English were superior while the Irish were inferior/subhuman, which was created to justify forcing Irish people from their land. These beliefs about race were exported to American and used to justify the creation of a permanent enslaved Black class, thus meeting the capitalistic need for cheap labor. Essentially, the idea that there could even be humans and subhumans.

Stephen R. Haynes, Noah’s Curse

How culture can reinforce structure. Ham, Noah’s son who is also dark-skinned, is cursed fo disrespecting his father and his 2 pale-skinned brothers are given dominance over him forever. White Americans used this story to justify racial divisions, as Ham’s descendants are understood to be Black and thus all Black people are unruly and scornful and must be subservient to white people. Essentially, it was a mythology that explained the divine origin of American slavery. This scripture, a piece of culture, was used to sacralize and perpetuate the institution of slavery, a social structure. Race was constructed into what people wanted to built it into.

William Julius Wilson, “The Economic Plight of Inner-City Black Males”

This is a structural and cultural issue. The structural issues are the decline in demand for unskilled labor, the loss in manufacturing jobs, and a more individualistic approach to things like unemployment by the government.

Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, “The Strange Enigma of Race in the Contemporary”

Symbolic racism is when something that isn’t race becomes the lever behind which racism is continued; just because something appears to be neutral doesn’t mean it is (redlining, education, etc). Racism without racists - white people have developed justifications for racial inequality that exempt them from any responsibility while structural racism still exits; they claim that something isn’t racist but instead something else.

E. Structure - Gender

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What was Virginia Woolf’s point in A Room of One’s Own?

She believed that women needed a place where they were not excluded by men because men would trample on their thinking and ideas.

Harriet Martineau

^^She used sociological methodology for the first time.^^ She believed that women’s fashion was actually killing them. ^^She was the first to address how to study society.^^

Anna Julia Cooper

She anticipated intersectionality. ^^She wrote that Black American women could help lead the U.S. forward because of the knowledge gained from their unique experience of observing society from the sidelines, making it so they could see things that people in politics could not (witness oppression, appeal to public consciousness).^^ She wrote about how social structures impacted Black women.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman

^^She wrote that women’s economic dependence on men distorts social relationships because it gives men all the power. The Yellow Wallpaper → it is not mentally healthy for women to be restricted to a domestic environment.^^ Society is set up to support male control which causes pain for women who wish to participate in areas of life where they are not welcome. ^^Mental illness results from a desire to be socially approved for behavior that is not approved by society.^^ Also, society excessively genders things.

Marianne Weber

^^She uses the micro-level reality of middle-class women to make macro-level assertions about patriarchy. She discusses husband and wife as a microcosm about patriarchal society.^^ The relationship in which men have all the money is messed up and ties identity to economic situation; women should be paid for domestic work.

Jane Addams

^^Participated in hands-on activism. She ran a settlement house for poor immigrant women and wrote about American society based on this experience. She emphasized social justice and not personal morality. Poor people were not poor because of personal faults but because of social structures.^^ America should raise moral concerns from the personal to the social.

Ida B. Wells-Barnett

^^She protested racism/segregation on railroads, preceding Rosa Parks. She wrote against lynch laws which mainly targeted Black men.^^ Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases = she wrote that other countries will say that the U.S. is barbaric if its lynch laws continue to exist.

Standpoint Theory

A standpoint is a place from which an individual views the world, which influences how the people adopting a specific standpoint socially construct the world. Everyone has one and social group membership affects people’s standpoints; the more oppressed people are, the broader their view of society is. Inequalities of different social groups creates differences in their standpoints. Men theorize at the abstract while women look at the details because of their societal standpoints. It’s based on the Marxist assertion that the oppressed class possesses knowledge unavailable to the socially privileged, particularly knowledge of social relations.

Question #1 of Modern Feminism in Examining Gender Structure

^^What about the women?^^ If any situation is being investigated, where are the women? If absent, why? Is it accidental or intentional that they are not mentioned? If there are women, what are they doing? Is what they’re doing different from the men? How are women experiencing the situation? What do they contribute to it? What does it mean to them to be in this situation?

Question #2 of Modern Feminism in Examining Gender Structure

^^Why is all this as it is?^^ Why is there difference? Discrimination? Structure?

Question #3 of Modern Feminism in Examining Gender Structure

How can we make the social world more just for women and all others? (action)

Outcomes of Feminist Theory

It added dimension of the feminist experience, shifting the viewpoint on our understanding of the world. It caused established systems of knowledge to be called into question, which upset the white male institution of sociology.

Tracey Steele, “Sex, Self, and Society”

The meaning of what it means to be female/feminine is constructed, not hardwired. Constructionism = reality is created and sustained through human social interaction vs. Essentialism = things have an indwelling “essence” or identity.

Carole Vance, “Social Construction Theory”

To what level does social construction go into sex? Is what we do, who we do it with, and even desire itself socially constructed? Is there an instinctual, universal element to sex?

Nancy Chodorow, “Gender Reproduction and the Reproduction of Mothering”

Women mothering is more than biology/instinct, but instead a social structure. Having a child fulfills a heterosexual relationship for women but interrupts it for men, which then drives the difference in male-female social roles.

Paula England, “Gender Revolution”

Change in the gender system has been uneven and stalled because there is no incentive for men to cross into women’s realms. Individualism drives women to achieve what they want while gender essentialism keeps society from advancing gender issues.

F. Structure - Sexual Identity

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Key Traditional Binaries

Sex, Gender, Sexuality

Why does vocabulary about gender and sexuality shift?

It shifts because they are socially constructed categories and because the understanding of the diversity of human experiences is continuing to grow.

Sex and Morality Since 1850

Sex was viewed as a behavior, not an identity. The decision to have sex with people other than your partner was a moral failing and a reflection of a weak or flawed character.

Sex and the Law Since 1850

17th/18th centuries = sex with the wrong partner was an offense against society; late 19th century = criminalization/enforcement of criminal sexual behaviors like prostitution and homosexuality begins; mid-20th century = sex is now an identity, not a behavior, and the decriminalization of sexual behaviors beings; early 21st century = people with sexual identities have rights and the law protects them.

Sex and Medicine Since 1850

Late 19th century = abnormal sexual behavior was believed to produce medical symptoms; early 20th century = abnormal sexual behavior is seen as an illness that needs to be cured; late 20th century = sex is seen as a biologically based identity that requires no treatment; early 21st century = sex is seen as an interpersonal transaction that can be medically enhanced.

Lesbian/Gay Studies

What it means to have a “gay” identity. They deal with articulation and affirm specific sexual identities.

Queer Theory

It is anti-identity and opposes normative sexual identities. It deals with anything that is not heteronormative and works to end the use of binaries and categorization. It questions conventional understandings of sexual identity by deconstructing the categories that sustain them.

Keith Negus, “Gender, Sexuality, and Musical Identity”

Articulation is the complex ways in which production and consumption connect. The connections are “constructed” and not based on the music’s or performer’s identity.

Laud Humphreys, “Tearoom Trade”

(Unethical) ethnography; about anonymous male sexual encounters.

Michel Foucault, “The History of Sexuality”

The first work on sexuality as a social construction. Since sexuality’s meaning has changed so much over time, it can’t be something that is permanent.

Steve Seidman, “Queer Theory and Sociology”

Queer theory rejects any single sexual identity. Sexual/gender identities are fluid/composite. Identity is open and contestable with regard to meaning and political role. Labels need to keep being used until it is as societally acceptable to be gay as it is to be straight.

Judith Butler, “Imitation and Gender Insubordination”

Sexuality is constructed as it is done; it is constantly recreated. Gender and sexuality is a performance in that they are shaped and created as people do them. Labels may be a political necessity right now but they shouldn’t be allowed to foreclose the future. Rather than defining lesbianism, it needs to be challenged that heterosexuality is the “original”. Heterosexuality is also a performance!

Barrie Thorne and Zella Luria, “Sexuality and Gender in Children’s Daily Worlds”

When left alone, children tend to play in sex-segregated groups where they teach each other acceptable gender performance. This gendered performance is a prelude to acceptable/gendered heterosexual behavior which they’ll teach each other in adolescence. Essentially, the role of peers in shaping gender and sexuality.

M.L. Gray, “Negotiating Identities/Queering Identities”

Online LGBTQ identities ring more true than mass media LGBTQ identities. Rather than help LGBTQ youth discover their essential identity, the internet may instead create a set of requirements/rules for it means to be gay. It makes it so that the youth have to adhere to a set of norms of what it means to be gay, similar to how straight identity imposes itself and its rules onto others and reduces uniqueness.

G. Structure - Class

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PEW Research Key Points

1) Over the past 50 years, the highest-earning 20% of U.S. households have brought in more than half of all U.S. income (52%).

2) Income inequality in the U.S is the highest of all the G7 nations.

3) The Black-white income gap has persisted over time.

4) 61% of Americans say that there is too much economic inequality in the country today but views differ by political party and household income level.

5) The wealth gap between the richest and poorest American families has more than doubled from 1989 to 2016.

6) Middle-class incomes have grown at a slower rate than upper-tier incomes over the past 5 decades.

Social Stratification Definition

Society’s categorization of people into rankings/classes based on factors like wealth, income, education, family, background, and power.

Marx on Class Stratification/Structure

Society is all about class structure and the conflict between the bourgeoisie and proletariat.

Weber on Class Stratification/Structure

Society is affected not only by class but also by status and party. Class is only a part of what’s important in societal structure.

Pierre Bourdieu on Class Stratification/Structure

Everyone has certain kinds of capital that they can use to acquire what they want in life, although most people will not end up in a different place from where they started. Capital = economic capital; social capital = someone’s network; cultural capital = knowing things that will help with getting in with the rich and powerful; symbolic capital = prestige.

Kingsley Davis and Wilbert Moore, “Stratification and the Functional Requirements of Society”

Social inequality is functional because it ensures that the most important positions are filled by the most talented people by rewarding and pushing them up into society. People with less talent are lower down societally because they don’t contribute as much.

Herbert J. Gans, “Use of the Underclass in America”

Poverty is functional only for the rich. It isn’t going away because of the 13 functions it plays for the wealthy. Poverty creates the idea of undeservingness in order to create an idea of deserving.

Julie Bettie, “Women Without Class”

The way teens performed femininity generally reproduced class. Underneath ethnicity is the influence of class, which is highly determinative but not explicit. Class often divides within the same “categories”. Since class is often underlying other factors, it’s hard to differentiate/separate them.